by a
few articles and a pamphlet. He was known to be a mouthpiece of a banker
who was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was supposed to
expect some patronage in return for his championship. Marcas, disgusted
by men and things, worn out by five years of fighting, regarded as a
free lance rather than as a great leader, crushed by the necessity of
earning his daily bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in
despair at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over to
dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty sous a day, the
sum strictly answering to his needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all
round him. He read the papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo
di Borgo had once lived like this for some time.

Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself
to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by Pythagorean
muteness. But he did not tell us the reasons for his conduct.

It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy
that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless
patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings,
his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases
as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only
to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with
men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a
peerage, as well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a towering
wave only to break in foam on the shoal; the wonders wrought in
reconciling adverse interests which, after working together for a week,
fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a
dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as
ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent. Then, what Marcas called the
stratagems of stupidity--you strike a man, and he seems convinced, he
nods his head--everything is settled; next day, this india-rubber ball,
flattened for a moment, has recovered itself in the course of the night;
it is as full of wind as ever; you must begin all over again; and you go
on till you understand that you are not dealing with a man, but with a
lump of gum that loses shape in the sunshine.

These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility of
doing mischief; two strong